Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Texas can’t enforce a law that would
have left the second-largest U.S. state with fewer than 10
abortion clinics, a federal judge ruled, extending to three a
run of pro-clinic rulings by federal judges in the region.

U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel yesterday ruled that a state
law requiring abortion facilities to meet the same physical
standards as outpatient surgical centers by Sept. 1 imposes an
undue burden on women’s access to safe legal abortion.

Federal judges this year have blocked two states from
enforcing laws that would have cut the number of abortion
clinics in Alabama to two and left Mississippi without any.

Women’s organizations said the Texas law would have closed
all abortion clinics west and south of San Antonio, forcing some
women to travel more than 500 miles (805 kilometers) to obtain
the procedure in major cities in the eastern and central parts
of the state.

Yeakel blocked the state from enforcing the strict new
building requirements on any currently licensed abortion
facility and prohibited the state from closing two remaining
clinics in west Texas and the Rio Grande Valley where doctors
couldn’t comply with an earlier rule that they have admitting
privileges at a local hospital.

Combination Effect

“When the two provisions are considered together, they
create a scheme that effects the closing of almost all abortion
clinics in Texas that were operating legally in the fall of
2013,” Yeakel said in the ruling.

Yeakel rejected the state’s argument that the seven or
eight clinics that could continue operating under the new rules
would meet the demands of the second-largest population of
reproductive-age women in the U.S. Each of these clinics would
have to serve 7,500 to 10,000 patients a year, he said.

“Even if the remaining clinics could meet the demand, the
court concludes that the practical impact on Texas women due to
the clinics’ closure statewide would operate for a significant
number of women in Texas just as drastically as a complete ban
on abortion,” he said.

Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for the Texas Attorney General’s
office, said in a statement that the state disagrees with the
ruling and will seek immediate relief from the U.S. Court of
Appeals in New Orleans. The state filed a notice of appeal
yesterday.

Clinic Costs

In a four-day nonjury trial, Yeakel heard testimony that
the new structural standards would add more than $1 million in
construction costs to widen a clinic’s hallways and doors,
install special ventilation systems and retrofit locker rooms,
among hundreds of requirements.

The judge also reviewed the effect on two of the last
clinics that served west and south Texas of the requirement for
doctors to obtain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Both
clinics closed after their doctors were unable to gain
privileges at local hospitals.

Yeakel, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, a
Republican, sided with the clinics last year in a separate court
challenge against the admitting-privileges rule.

That decision was overturned in March by the appeals court
in New Orleans. The appeals court ruled that Texas women aren’t
unduly burdened by having to travel as far as 150 miles or to
another state to obtain legal abortions.

Women’s Health

Texas defended its restrictions as necessary to safeguard
women’s health. The state maintained it has no legal obligation
to make in-state abortion services available to its citizens,
who are free to visit clinics in neighboring states.

“There are no obstacles involved with traveling across
state lines, particularly when the clinic in question is less
than a mile from the state line,” lawyers for the state said in
court papers. They referred to a New Mexico facility that will
remain open after the last one in El Paso closes.

Yeakel called the state’s argument that women in west Texas
can get abortions in New Mexico, where clinics don’t have to
comply with outpatient surgical center codes, “disingenuous
and incompatible” with the state’s goal of protecting women’s
health.

“If, however, the state’s underlying purpose in enacting
the requirement was to reduce or eliminate abortion in parts of
all of Texas, the state’s position is perfectly congruent with
such a goal,” he said. “These substantial obstacles have
reached a tipping point that threatens to chip away at the
private choice” women have to end early pregnancies under
federal law.

University Study

A study by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the
University of Texas, estimated the number of abortions in Texas
fell 13 percent since the hospital-privileges rule went into
effect last November.

Before the Republican-controlled Legislature passed
abortion regulations in mid-2013, Texas had 41 licensed abortion
clinics. That number dropped to 22 after the admitting-privileges rule kicked in, according to the study.

Six clinics can comply with the outpatient surgical center
standards, according to court papers. The abortion-rights
activists told Yeakel in an Aug. 4 filing they are trying to get
two additional clinics operational by September, with no
guarantees on the timetable.

Women’s health advocates said they sued to block the
abortion restrictions to keep Texas “from plunging millions of
women back into the darkness and grave danger of illegal
abortion that Roe v. Wade was supposed to end,” Nancy Northup,
president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in an e-mail referring to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision saying
women have a right to abortion under the Constitution.

Conflicting Rulings

The Austin ruling comes against a shifting backdrop of
conflicting abortion-related rulings across the southern U.S.

A three-judge appellate panel, different from the one that
overturned Yeakel’s admitting-privileges decision, on July 29
blocked enforcement of a Mississippi admitting-privileges rule
in a New Orleans appeals court decision. That panel said
Mississippi’s rule would close the state’s last remaining clinic
and force residents to travel out of state to access legal
abortion.

“Mississippi may not shift its obligation to respect the
established constitutional rights of its citizens to another
state,” the panel said in a divided ruling.

On Aug. 4, an Alabama trial judge temporarily blocked
enforcement of that state’s admitting-privileges rule, which
would close three of five remaining abortion clinics in that
state. The judge called the state’s justification for its rule
“exceedingly weak.”

The Texas case is Whole Woman’s Health v. Lakey,
1:14-00284, U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas
(Austin).